


In a Perfect World

by clarkedearing



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drabbles, F/M, Fluff, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-09 23:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14725809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarkedearing/pseuds/clarkedearing
Summary: A collection of drabbles and short pieces about Steve and Natasha.





	1. Insomnia

**Author's Note:**

> I had a couple of drabbles laying around so I decided to make them into a series. Each one will stand alone unless stated otherwise. Smut will be labeled at the beginning of the chapter it appears in.

Sam knocks on the door to Steve’s room, but there’s no response. When they arrived in Wakanda, they were given rooms of their own; Steve’s between Sam and Natasha. Two years of sharing rooms in hostels across the world, they all needed a little privacy, but still wanted to be close enough to each other in case they needed someone.

The battle with The Outriders and Thanos was two days ago and Steve hasn’t come out of his room since. None of them came out of the violence unscathed, Sam had two broken ribs, Natasha received a nasty gash across her stomach, but Steve was by far the worst off. After his one on one arm wrestling match with the Mad Titan, he was hit with the gauntlet and thrown a hundred feet. Natasha was the first to reach him, checking him for signs of life but not finding a pulse. She performed CPR until they were able to get ahold of Shuri. Sam picked up Steve and flew him back to the palace with the help of Vision while Wanda kept Thanos occupied. Shuri said with the amount of force used to throw him, Steve should have been killed instantly, but his body was already healing itself, all she had to do was get his heart beating at a normal speed.

Same knocks again.

“I’m just gonna come in if you don’t open this door,” he says, placing his hand on the doorknob.

The door opens, and a hand pulls him into the room.

“Would you stop yelling,” Natasha says. “He’s finally asleep.”

Sam looks at the bed behind her where Steve is lying on his back with the covers bunched around his waist, one arm draped over his stomach and the other stretched out to his right. Sam returns his attention to Natasha.

“Finally?” He asks, “Have you been in here all night?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I couldn’t sleep and I could hear him moving around so I came to ask if he wanted to take a walk and the room was a mess.”

She leads Sam to a living room set by the door and gestures for him to sit. Natasha continually looks back at the bed as if Steve is going to disappear at any second. Sam watches Natasha watch Steve as she wrings her hands, a nervous tick he’s never noticed her having. Sam leans in and lowers his voice.

“What’s going on,” Sam asks, “Is he okay?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “He hasn’t slept since he woke up in Shuri’s lab and when I came in last night, he didn’t realize I was in here until I stopped him from breaking a lamp.”

Steve shifts in his sleep and Natasha whips her head around to make sure he’s okay.

“He asked me why he couldn’t just die,” Natasha says, still watching Steve.

“What?” Sam says, shocked that Steve would reveal those kinds of thoughts to anyone. “He said that?”

Natasha nods.

“He sat on the bed, crying. He asked me why he was still alive.”

It makes sense that Steve thinks this way; he doesn’t know where he belongs, everyone from his past life is dead except for Barnes, and he’d been frozen for seventy years and almost died less than three days ago. Sam understands exactly how Steve feels, but because he’s Captain America, he’s not allowed to show people that he’s in pain. Sam thinks Steve believes that he doesn’t get to have PTSD, he’s a symbol for people so he thinks he has to be strong.

Sam watches Natasha and from her profile, he can see a tear waiting to be released at any second. He’s never seen Natasha show this much emotion to him and before now he never thought he would. He wonders if Steve has seen her without her mask, Natasha is much closer to him than she is to Sam, but her masks aren’t just an act she uses to keep people at arm’s length, it’s how she was raised. She’s watching Steve so attentively that Sam wonders how deep her feelings for Steve go, it’s safe to say she and Steve have become a kind of package in the past couple of years. Sam went home after Steve broke him and the rest of the team out of the supermax prison. Steve and Natasha went dark, traveling the world, just the two of them, for a year before Sam decided to rejoin them. Anything could have happened between them, he thinks, they deserve to be happy.

Steve moves again, raking his right arm across the empty space beside him.

“Nat,” Steve says. Sam looks at Natasha, who is already out of her chair and by his side. She holds his outstretched hand to her chest and strokes his hair with her free hand.

“It’s okay, he’s still sleeping,” Natasha says, running her thumb across the back of Steve’s hand. Sam is certain she was occupying the empty space beside Steve before Sam came in.

“I’m gonna go,” Sam says, as he stands. “Do you need anything?”

“I think we’re okay for now,” she says, “but thank you. I’ll call you when he wakes up, okay?”

Sam nods and shuts the door behind him, doing his best to make as little noise as possible.


	2. Fingers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve uses his fingers to let people know Natasha is taken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this in the car today, I hope you guys like it. Feel free to comment, I love reading your thoughts.

Natasha watched as Steve helped Sam get Vision back into the Quinjet. Wanda was following close behind, not letting him out of her sight. Sam helped Vision get strapped into his seat; Steve laid a comforting hand on his arm before pulling Wanda aside. Natasha couldn’t hear was he was saying to her, but she knew it had to be something fatherly as Wanda’s expression softened from worried to still worried, but less aggressively so. Natasha grabbed her bag from the ground beside her and headed to her seat in the cockpit.  
In the air, Natasha engaged the autopilot and turned her seat to face her team. The air around her was still and quiet, no one in the jet speaking loudly enough for anyone around them to hear. Wanda sat next to Vision, holding his hand whispering to him. Sam and Rhodey spoke quietly in the corner, Rhodey’s hand on Sam’s shoulder as Sam hung his head. Natasha assumed Sam was apologizing for what happened to Rhodey’s legs. She’d known James Rhodes’ long enough to know that he didn’t blame Sam, she wished he would forgive himself.  
Natasha let herself look at Bruce. He was sitting in the seat closest to the door as he always had before in case the other guy showed up and needed to make a quick exit, rather than hurt the team. She hadn’t held much of a conversation with him since his return, and apart from Sam’s offhanded comment about the awkwardness of their reunion. Natasha wanted to punch him for opening his mouth. When he said it, Natasha had taken half a step away from Steve, putting the most space there had been the journey to New York between them. Steve noticed, she knew he did, but didn’t say anything. He shifted his body a little closer to her as she looked at Bruce, his way of keeping her close and subtly letting Bruce know that she was no longer available. She was irritated for a second when she felt him decrease the space between them. They hadn’t been together that long, only a few months, it was hard to keep track of things when they didn’t have an exact start date.  
Over the past two-years, Natasha and Steve had grown closer than she had been with anyone, including Clint: they started touching more, platonically of course, she slept beside him when he had nightmare and vice versa, one night she found herself curled into him as she read to him in Russian, he told her that hearing her speak her native language was the sexiest thing he’d ever heard. They fucked that night. After that, they stopped getting two beds or two separate rooms in the hostels they stayed in. It was easier for them to share a bed, and they both rested peacefully when they slept beside each other. After a couple of months of them coupling up, Sam joined them in Zurich where they had been staying for longer than usual.  
“You two got something you want to tell me?” Sam asked as they went over Hydra files in Steve and Natasha’s shared room. Steve was resting his free hand on Natasha’s knee, running his thumb along the fabric of her leggings. She wasn’t paying attention to the file, or her surroundings, her mind was focused on the constant back and forth of Steve’s digit on her knee, lulling her into a space of nothingness. Steve cleared his throat and gave her knee a squeeze, pulling her out of her head.  
“What,” Natasha said, looking immediately at Steve. He leaned his entire body toward her, put his lips up to her ear, and asked.  
“What should we tell him, we haven’t really put a label on this,” he waved two fingers between them. Natasha didn’t give him an answer, she pulled her body a couple of inches away from him and turned to Sam.  
“We’re figuring things out,” She said, looking to Steve for any sign of objection, but he gave none.

“Hey,” Natasha said, pointing to the seat beside Bruce. He nodded and shifted his body so that he was on the edge of his own seat, putting a clear space between them; he did that with everyone so she didn’t take offense. She knew her feelings for him we real to a certain extent.  
“Hey,” Bruce said, “sorry I left the way I did.”  
“Don’t worry about it,” Natasha waved him off, “I got over it.”  
“I don’t think we would have worked anyway, do you?” He asked. “I think we were both looking at each other with self-hatred and convenience on the brain.”  
Natasha knew it was true, but it still kind of hurt to hear. Steve came up behind her and placed his hand on the back of her neck so lightly, anyone else might not have felt it. She felt the heat that pulsated from his body as he approached her. Solidifying contact with her skin, Steve traced his index finger down the side of her neck. He Steve loved touching her, but something about his movement was off. Natasha realized what he was doing when Bruce’s eyes left hers to follow Steve’s movements. She and Steve had never had the Bruce conversation, but she assumed he knew that she had moved on, completely. After nearly a year, they had a total of one conversation about what they were, and it was the first time Steve told her he loved her. She still hadn’t said it back, so maybe Steve didn’t fully understand that he held her heart and soul in his hands.  
“How’ve you been Bruce,” Steve asked.  
“Not bad,” Bruce said, “I spent two years on an alien planet with the other guy running the show. But I’m back on Earth, so I think I’m back on track for now.”  
“Good to have you back,” Steve said, “We might need both of you.”  
“Yeah,” Bruce said, scratching his head. “I might be the only one of us making an appearance for a while.”  
“Either way, your help is appreciated,” Steve gave Natasha’s neck one last stroke and walked away.  
Bruce resumed eye contact with Natasha as Steve moved farther away.  
“You two?” He asked.  
Natasha nodded, giving him a small smile.  
“I’m happy for you,” Bruce said. He reached out and took her hand in his. “Are you happy?”  
“Yeah,” She said, “I am.”  
“Good,” he said. “You two always had a connection none of us could touch.”  
“It’s good to see you Bruce,” Natasha said. “I should probably get back to piloting this thing. I want to hear more about the alien planet later.”


End file.
